I would think that after someone made the first ventriloquist doll, put it on their knee, and began to make it 'talk,' that whoever was witnessing this sick spectacle play out would've immediately and forcefully said "knock it off!" I mean, honestly - how psychologically damaged and starved for entertainment did people used to be that ventriloquism ever seemed like a good idea? From top to bottom, it's truly unhealthy. But had good sense prevailed and all public displays of ventriloquism had been outlawed, we never would've had the 1978 thriller Magic to enjoy.More correctly, I should say that we would've never had the trailer for Magic to enjoy because while the movie - starring Anthony Hopkins as a ventriloquist suffering from multiple personality disorder - is deadly dull, the 30 second trailer for Magic is the stuff of Gen-X legend. I've read that this spot aired only once on television before being pulled due to parent complaints that it gave their kids nightmares but if that's the case then I must've been real lucky to be in front of the TV when it made its one and only appearance.
If someone watching it for the first time now finds it hard to imagine how it would traumatize even a young kid, I think what really scared kids my age about it was the way it totally ambushed them. There's no prelude to what you're seeing, no build-up to the scary stuff. It just jumps right into Fats the Dummy talking in a big close-up, right at the viewer, and I'm sure that whatever commercial or program had been airing before this came on was something completely innocuous. This spot blindsided kids and at just 30 seconds, it was over before they even had a chance to really register what was going on. Years later, when I finally saw Magic, I couldn't believe how dreary and unexciting it was. But the original trailer still casts a shivery spell.
